Deptford Gallery

In creating these works I was remembering the role of Deptford in the development of ship building and the process of coppering the bottom of ships in particular. I use cobalt turquoise as a dominant pigment here as it is a by product of copper mining, at once beautiful and toxic, evocative of water and depth and danger. Deptford is where Charles the II gave royal approval to the copper bottoming of ships, a process fraught with technical difficulties, which eventually lead to massive growth in copper mining in England, and to ships that were sea worthy enough for the transatlantic slave trade. Cobalt is used in contemporary rechargeable batteries and still associated with dangerous mining practices. The green pigment dominant in these images is pthalo green, a modern industrial product made and owned by ICI. The earth tones are ochres, the oldest known pigments to humanity, global in use, traceable to their source. I also wanted to create images which simply had a sense of space, disturbed and disturbing and at once beautiful, spaces for you the viewer to fall in get a little lost and remember.